My apologies for the delay in posting, it's been a wild few days. We arrived in Hanoi mid-morning on Saturday after 26 hours of travel, including a three-hour layover in San Francisco. My methodology seemed to work, though, and traveling through the night rather than during the day (as we did last time) helped us to get some sleep on the long flight and has definitely helped with the jet lag.
I'd arranged with the hotel to have a driver come pick us up and sure enough, a skinny Vietnamese man stood there with a sign that said "Welcome Teresa." He drove us back to our hotel, but first he had to cross the river and the bridge was packed. Trying to find another way around, he drove all over under the bridge and then back, and around another way, until finally we pulled up to a guard shack. Next to the shack a sign was posted with a NO sign for trucks, animal-pulled carts and cars. But our taxi driver thought he might be able to get around the rules and pulled out a wad of plastic VND bills. He tried several times to get the officer to take the money, arguing back and forth in Vietnamese while I sat in the back hoping they didn't ask me for money. He pulled out a few more bills, but the officer wouldn't budge--the taxi could not use the motorbike entrance or lane. Needless to say,the taxi driver wasn't too happy when he had to get back onto the bridge in the same place that he had escaped from 15 minutes and dozens of cars before.
The long drive was worth it all when we arrived at the hotel and Huyen came hurrying to give us all hugs. She helped us so many times when lived at the hotel two years ago and was always so kind to the kids. She even presented Audrey with some beautiful lotus flowers.
In Hanoi, we met up with Keith and Trang who generously offered to let us use their new widescreen HDTV as a computer monitor. Yes, it's huge, but it works. He also loaned us dozens and dozens of movies which means the kids will have plenty to watch while I'm teaching (as well as working on their projects and playing). They treated us to bun cha at our favorite place just down the street from our hotel. Far too tired to enjoy it, Stuart sat across from Keith lazily eating until he could eat no more. It was less than usual, though, because he was fighting a bit of a stomach issue. Thankfully that dissipated and everyone is feeling pretty well.
On Sunday morning the driver came to pick us up and smiled broadly when he saw us. We packed all of our stuff (4 suitcases, 2 duffle bags, 3 backpacks and a widescreen TV) into the back of his SUV and off we went. He doesn't speak a bit of English, so we just chitchatted with each other and he listened to his music most of the time.
On the way, somewhere before Ninh Binh, police officers in brown uniforms stood at the side of the road waving cars over with white batons. Our car was one of them. As we pulled over, the driver pulled some money out of his wallet and tucked it into the compartment between the front seats, then grabbed some paperwork from the glove box. We stopped and he got out to talk with the stone-faced officer behind the car and I couldn't really see them without turning and making it obvious, so the three of us just sat and waited for him to return. It took several minutes and, I would find out later, 200,000VND for us to have the luxury of driving on.
We had one more stop before getting to Thanh Hoa because after that chaos, Mr. Luc needed a smoke. So we stopped at a bus station where there is a little convenience store-type thing in the front. We waited in the car and he had a cigarette, then came up to the car to gesture that he wanted to eat. Oh sure, that's fine. But I was a little hungry, too, and the kids... can we join you? We all climbed out and he showed us a ramp and out to an outdoor seating area with dozens of tables in several partitioned areas. But first, he pointed to the bathroom and since I really did have to go, I headed to the dirty little squats, but made sure not to touch anything.
We were given a table and a menu, but my Vietnamese language skills are pretty basic. I recognized Ga xa ot, which is Lemongrass and Chili Chicken and asked for that. Mr. Luc pointed to something with Muc as the meat and none of us knew what that meant. Needless to say, we were a bit taken aback when a plate of baby octopus tentacles showed up on the table, suckers and all. We managed to all take a bite, some of us took a few (not Audrey--no surprise).
Around 2pm, we finally arrived in Thanh Hoa getting a different room on the same floor of the building we lived in before. It's a bit nicer and has been painted more recently than our last room had. The kitchen is lovely in comparison to what we had before with real counter (granite, of course) and a tiny kitchen sink. There is a drainer/shelves above the sink rather than the plastic shelves on the floor The bathroom was fairly clean and all in all much nicer than the other room. Unfortunately at this point, we only have one room, but perhaps we can get that changed. And there is no device to hang up the second bed's mosquito net. So we've been taping it to the wall which only works for about half the night. Frustrating and tends to make me a bit claustrophobic. But for right now, it works.
